Please read our open letter and sign here. We will add signatures to the letter as we receive them. You can read our open letter here and sign below:

https://unionaskingforboosterexceptions.com/

“Mother Nature makes the rules.  All we can do is be rational in response.” – Dr. Vinay Prasad

Dear President Harris and Union Board of Trustees,

We are students, parents, alumni, faculty, and staff of Union College. We are grateful for Union’s efforts at keeping students and the Schenectady community safe during this pandemic. As concerned members of the global U family, we write this open letter to express our strong opposition to Union’s Covid-19 booster mandate. Considering the new data available about both the vaccine and the virus, we urge you to accept students’ exemption requests based on the factors outlined below.

We appreciate that the booster mandate and new procedures for the winter and spring term stem from the good intention to prevent severe illness in the Schenectady community. But as with any public health policy, many factors — scientific, ethical, and legal — must be considered and weighed. We are concerned that Union, in issuing this booster mandate, has not considered the recent and evolving scientific data regarding the vaccine and the virus that makes a booster mandate inappropriate and unnecessary, raising serious ethical and legal questions.

Most recently the World Health Organization's Chief Scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said "There’s “no evidence right now” that suggests healthy children and adolescents need booster shots to supplement their Covid-19 vaccinations."

In an Interview on CNN on January 10th, 2022, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stated the following concerning vaccines: “Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death. They prevent it. What they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”  This statement was emphasized by Dr. Anthony Fauci the following day when he stated: “The highly contagious Omicron variant will find just about everybody.”  Both statements by the highest Covid advisors invalidate the once valid premise that boosting a Union student would help prevent transmission in the Schenectady community.

In addition to that very sobering news from Drs. Walensky and Fauci came the World Health Organization and the European Union regulators warning: “…that frequent Covid-19 booster shots could adversely affect the immune response.”  In fact, on January 11th Dr. Paul Offit, the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, stated in The Atlantic “that getting boosted would not be worth the risk for the average healthy 17-year-old boy.”  Dr. Offit advised his own son, who is in his 20s, not to get a third dose.  That statement followed an Urgent Safety Warning by Immunologist Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, imploring the Director of Boston College’s University Health Service, not to have an indiscriminate booster policy.  In his open letter, he stated that the Boston College administration’s policy - from a clinical and immunological standpoint- [students with] already very robust immune systems stand to gain virtually no benefit from an added booster vaccination by coercive mandate – and can only be harmed from the adverse effects associated with an unnecessary medical treatment.”  He goes on to say that anyone that is vaccinated and has already had Covid has hybrid immunity. Additionally, because of their recent infection, “…force re-activating their immune systems against COVID-19, using a booster vaccine, is a dangerous error in clinical practice — this, I state as an immunologist and physician with a good understanding of how critical inflammatory diseases and immunological tissue specific damage can be triggered in some.”

Echoing Dr. Noorchashm’s sentiment, Dr. Marty Makary a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, penned an op-ed on January 4th pointing out that there have been no clinical trials for boosters versus a placebo and “[Universities] which are now requiring boosters in healthy young people are venturing into uncharted waters. They are risking health complications in young people for the sake of beating back mild and asymptomatic infections.” He furthered pointed out that the most recent data out of the United Kingdom found that booster efficacy at 10 weeks dropped to 35% with Pfizer and 45% with Moderna.

In January 2022, Union has identified over 151 positive cases of Covid-19 cases with “every case of the Omicron variant to date [being] found in fully vaccinated students, a portion of whom had also received a booster shot.” Union’s own data highlights that vaccination, even with the booster, has very limited capability in stopping virus transmission. A similar conclusion has been reached by CDC’s research that vaccinated people seem to transmit Covid-19 similarly to unvaccinated people. As President Harris stated in his January 9th, 2020, video message to the Union community, the virus will continue to be transmitted among our highly vaccinated campuses. He explicitly acknowledged the impossibility of containing or eliminating the Omicron illnesses, and he is fully aware that vaccines and booster injections cannot stop the spread of Covid-19.

As so many students test positive, they are, in essence, receiving a natural booster based on the very latest variants of the virus. And yet, Union is ignoring the natural immunity in these students and mandating a booster injection based on older variants, which Union knows is ineffective at stopping the spread of Covid-19 in the Union and Schenectady community. This decision is counter to the latest science and seems like it is made less to promote students’ health and more to achieve Union’s stated goal of protecting the community, but as stated above, that goal is no longer feasible. Thus, requiring a booster injection that is ineffective, and potentially dangerous, for students who are naturally contracting and fighting off a virus that many scientists believe is becoming more endemic than pandemic, is no longer meeting Union’s stated goal.

Mounting evidence points to serious risks from exposure to the Covid-19 vaccines. The latest scientific research shows that Covid-19 vaccine side effects such as myocarditis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and pericarditis are more common in young people than previously known (see references 1-5 listed below). Recently, an Oxford-conducted study of men under the age of 40 demonstrated that the risk of myocarditis after one dose mRNA exceeds the risk of myocarditis from an actual Covid-19 infection.  

Even more alarming, the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicates that there were over 15,000 Covid-19 vaccine related death cases in 2021, compared with the previous average of 158 vaccine related deaths per year (Pre-Covid), in the context of a yearly total of 280 million injections and 70 different vaccines. This data shows that, compared to other vaccines, Covid-19 injections carry around 100 times the risk of death.
Why force such risks on our students when the rate of severe Covid-19 illness in the 16 to 40 year age group is exceedingly low? Newer variants appear to pose a near-zero risk of death for college students. Current data shows that the vaccine itself can pose more risk to young people than the virus itself and repeated injections only compound those risks without any discernible reduction in the spread of the virus.

All students are individuals, each someone’s child with unique medical, psychological, and emotional needs. Indeed, as the CDC has recognized, “people aged 18-64 years who are at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure and transmission because of occupational or institutional setting may receive a booster shot of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine at least 6 months after their Pfizer-BioNTech primary series, based on their individual benefits and risks” (emphasis added). It is worth noting that both the FDA and the CDC in highly unusual moves broke with their respective advisory committees of independent experts over the use of boosters in young people.  On September 17, 2021 the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted 16-2 against recommending boosters for the general public and only recommended Americans 65 and older at high risk get the boosters.  This independent FDA panel specifically cited a lack of sufficient safety data for younger age groups as a contributing factor in their decision.  The CDC subsequently also broke with its own Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices which voted 9-6 against authorizing boosters for those under 65 years old. Since then, as noted above, a growing body of evidence including peer-reviewed studies have demonstrated the significantly increased risks the mRNA vaccines and the additional booster shots pose to young people who otherwise face a very low risk from the virus.  Yet, with its blanket mandate, Union seems to be interpreting the CDC’s guidance on eligibility as a directive, ignoring both the science and CDC’s own guidance regarding individual benefits and risks. In so doing, the college unilaterally supplanted the role of a personal medical doctor for an individual with its own broad brush judgment.

The power differential between the university and students, which Union briefly acknowledged last year, raises serious ethical issues. In addition to the risk of serious side effects and death, Union’s injection mandate can trigger generational trauma in some students from intrusive, experimental, and other medically questionable procedures. For many students, the coercive nature of a third injection, after being told that they needed only two injections to attend Union, is contributing to psychological distress and emotional disorientation about future academic, social, and professional potential. We are seeing staggering mental health problems on campus and off. At this point in the pandemic, after nearly two years of following constantly changing rules, we would do right by our students to give them control over whether they receive additional doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
That is why we believe that the question of whether a student should receive a third (or fourth or fifth) booster must be answered individually by each student, in consultation with a medical professional or doctor, rather than by school administrators.  However, we realize that no decision will be 100% approved by students, parents, alumni, and faculty. Hence, we are only asking for students that go through the exemption process to be granted those exemptions.

Considering new data on the virus and the vaccine, the university's booster mandate may very well cause disability or death by imposing further vaccine requirements, and it will have to bear the moral, ethical and legal responsibility whether that is a month, a year or 5 years from now.  The college’s decision to mandate this booster in light of the detailed information shared with you heretofore in numerous individual communications and in light of the complete lack of data on the long term effects of these vaccines on individuals should be serious cause for concern both for the students' and the college’s future interests. Reliance upon questionable recommendations by the FDA and the CDC that  ignore their own expert panel recommendations may prove woefully insufficient to shield the college from liabilities resulting from this policy. As alumni, parents, students, faculty and staff of Union College we do not want to see any unintentional but avoidable harm come to our community or college.

Please do the right thing and respect the bodily integrity of each student and respect their wishes and the recommendations of their personal medical care providers.

Additional References:

1. WHO's Chief Scientist, Dr. Swaminathan's quote (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/who-says-theres-no-evidence-healthy-children-adolescents-need-covid-boosters.html?__source=androidappshare)

2. Dr. Rochelle Walensky quote ((https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/96412)

3. Dr. Fauci CNN Interview (https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/11/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html)

4. Intravenous injection of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine can induce acute myopericarditis in mouse model (Clin Infect Dis 2021 https://pubmed.ncbi.nih.gov/34406358)

5. European Union Advisory Panel booster warning (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/repeat-booster-shots-risk-overloading-immune-system-ema-says)

6. Dr. Paul Offit's statement on boosters (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/01/should-teens-get-booster-omicron/621222/)

7. Dr. Hooman Noorchashm warning on boosters for previously infected (https://noorchashm.medium.com/an-urgent-safety-warning-to-dr-97503baddf46)

8. Dr. Marty Makary's op-ed (https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/universities-covid-policies-defy?r=abaxo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwAR1LYQPblaIoqwNXsGwmJsW3XTNlZA3WcW24r3ajMFw8pMoc7T2jxsx1-B0)

9.  The UK's most recent date on waning vaccine efficacy and Omicron (https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/96412)

10. CDC report that the vaccinated spread the virus (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0730-mmwr-covid-19.html)

11. Oxford University study on myocarditis risk related to vaccination (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf)

12. CDC recommendations for boosters (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0924-booster-recommendations-.html)

13.  FDA Advisory Committees vote on Boosters (https://scitechdaily.com/fda-panel-voted-16-2-to-deny-authorization-of-pfizers-covid-vaccine-booster-shot-to-the-general-public/)

14. CDC ignores FDA Advisory Committees booster recommendations (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/cdc-director-defends-controversial-call-on-pfizers-covid-boosters.html)

15. Intravenous injection of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine can induce acute myopericarditis in mouse model (Clin Infect Dis 2021 https://pubmed.ncbi.nih.gov/34406358)

16. The S1 protein of SARS-CoV-2 crosses the blood-brain barrier in mice (Nature Neuroscience 24, 368-378.)

17. SARS-CoV-2 spike impairs DNA damage repair and inhibits V(D)J recombination in vitro (Viruses 2021, 13 (10), 2056; https://doi.org/10.3390/v13102056)

18. Be aware of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein: There is more than meets the eyes (J Biol Regul Homeost Agents May-Jun 2021)

19. Risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection (Nature Medicine 2021 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf)


**SIGN BELOW. Once we reach a critical mass, we will send to Union and media outlets**